Arizona GOP Senator John McCain regrets choosing then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the presidential race he lost to Barack Obama.

According to The New York Times, he feels that if he could do it over he would have picked former Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

Lieberman told The Times that he hadn’t known McCain felt that way. “It touched me greatly,” he said.

Palin started out strong as the first Republican woman selected as a vice presidential candidate. But she soon became a controversial figure. In one case, she denounced as “ridiculous” talk of the Republican National Committee’s $150,000 spending spree on clothing and accessories for the Palin family. “Those clothes, they are not my property,” she insisted.

“Just like the lighting and the staging and everything else that the RNC purchased, I’m not taking them with me,” she said.